Page 111 of Diamond Ring
Eventually Alex stirs, pressing a kiss to his shoulder, another, like he’s trying to say something, even if he doesn’t do more than mumble.
A lot of baseball is about routinizing the ordinary so that they’re ready when the extraordinary does happen. They get up, clean up. Jake ducks down to his room for his meds, nodding at Gordon in the hallway, not bothering with an explanation. Because he’ll be more or less a civilian after this, no matter how the game ends.
From the set of his shoulders, Gordon’s also amped up, moving with a nervousness Jake hasn’t seen from him before, a reminder that he might be immortal in the game’s eyes but isn’t invulnerable. That he’ll be a civilian after the game too, or as close to one as someone destined for the Hall of Fame and a cushy analyst job can be.
“You good?” Jake asks.
Gordon gives a considered nod. “Should be.”
“Keep your head up. We’re gonna need it.” And he unlocks his hotel door as Gordon’s laugh echoes up the hallway.
By game time, Gothams Stadium is like being plunged into a hostile ocean, fans hurling invectives at their outfielders as the Elephants go through their warmups. There’s no covering on the bullpen, and Jake feels like a fish trapped in a pond awaiting a stick of dynamite.
That explosion comes in the fourth inning, not from the crowd but from the Elephants starter, who throws a curveball, then steps off the mound. Then does the thing no pitcher wants to do—a sudden, desperate grab of his own elbow like he just felt a pop.
The crowd noise was bad, but silence is worse, an entire stadium practically sucking its teeth in sympathy. Trainers jog out, Courtland with them. The Elephants pitcher tries a few cursory warmup pitches, but the diagnosis is clear: They’refucked.
A flurry of activity in the bullpen as guys get up—ones who pitched yesterday whose arms are feeling the effects of the long season, the cold, the sympathetic pain of seeing another player injured.
“Fischer,” Martinez yells, and Jake moves away from the chain-link fence separating the bullpen from the field, because he’s probably blocking the view, “get hot!”
Three words, a command Jake’s heard for most of his baseball life. Except on the biggest stage imaginable, with the weight of fifty thousand spectators and his teammates’ dreams sitting on his shoulders.
He’s sure he warms up—bike, soft toss, a few pitches off the tilted bullpen mound—though each movement feels like it’s from a flip-book, a snapshot of himself taken from afar. Then the inevitable swing of the bullpen gate. He jogs in to pitch, listing things to ground himself: the compression of the outfield grass under his cleats, the sting of the autumn air, Alex standing at the mound.
Jake expects game planning, strategy discussion, possibly empty assurance. Instead the gentle weight of Alex’s hand on his chest. “Your necklace is tucked in.”
Jake glances down at where his necklace is secured between his undershirt and jersey, the way he’s been wearing it for the past ten years. He slips it out so it displays, big as a moon. “That better?”
Alex gives an approving nod. “Now you look like you.” He lifts the neck of his jersey, revealing the loop of Jake’s old Phiten necklace.
“You wore it?” Jake says.
“Felt lucky. If you believe in that sort of thing.” And Alex jogs back to home plate, squats, and thumps his mitt.
The din of the stadium resumes, the crowd bellowing reminders about the last time Jake played in a world championship, as if he’s been preserved under glass since then, insults that would have landed months ago. Now Jake shrugs them off. He steadies the ball in his glove, his feet on the mound, himself on the planet, then throws.
At some point, he comes back to himself. Looks at their scoreboard where the Elephants are holding a slim one-run lead. The outs tick down, innings discarded like pages.
After the eighth, Courtland comes over to him in the dugout. Jake expects a handshake, to leave the game in the hands of their closer. “Got another in you?” Courtland asks.
An offer Jake can decline, can say his arm is done. Can leave the game, having surrendered not a run—perfect, without the risk of the ninth inning to compromise it. Because as every pitcher knows, a one-run game is really a tied game in disguise. “Should be good to go.”
Courtland grunts, a noise that manages to convey hope, skepticism, and the shell of a sunflower seed toward the littered floor of the dugout. “All right.”
Jake watches the top of the inning from the dugout railing. Alex comes over, balancing two cups of Gatorade, a tablet of scouting reports. He hands one of the cups to Jake.
“What are we drinking to?” Jake asks.
Alex raises his cup, waiting for Jake to tap his against it. “A stadium with an upper deck?”
“I guess I can drink to that.” Jake surveys the field where the Oakland hitter is trying, valiantly, to add more runs in the ninth, where Gordon is standing in the on-deck circle, taking the final warmup swings of his career. “And to us winning this whole fucking thing.”
Alex laughs, then drains his cup.
Two outs gone in the inning now, with a runner on third. Maybe they should be talking approach. Maybe Jake should be thinking about what to throw and where and how and the hitters’ weaknesses and the unpredictability of the universe. Instead he watches Gordon stride to the batter’s box to a boom of gracious applause from the stadium.
Jake nods to where he’s standing. “What do you think it’d be like—being that good for that long?”
